


see you next tuesday

by justdoityoufucker



Category: Naruto
Genre: Love Confessions, M/M, POV Multiple, bad timing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-02
Updated: 2020-05-01
Packaged: 2021-03-01 23:28:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,466
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23955352
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/justdoityoufucker/pseuds/justdoityoufucker
Summary: A love confession (and its semi-disastrous aftermath) from two sides.Day zero seemed normal.
Relationships: Hatake Kakashi/Umino Iruka
Comments: 6
Kudos: 125





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> reupload of a previously posted fic. don't remember if i posted it here or just on tumblr, but the iruka chapter was also published in the "Oh, Sensei!" kakairu fan zine in 2017

Day zero seemed normal. Iruka had cleaned up his classroom, filed the last of the stray papers that needed filing, said goodbye to his fellow teachers, and left the Academy for the three feet of snow (and counting) that Konohagakure offered. He had four weeks off teaching, double hours at the mission room, and nothing in particular he had to do during the break other than get real rest and maybe catch up on some reading.

Home was his first and only stop, blessedly warm after walking across the village into the falling snow. Iruka had barely a couple moments to enjoy it, as a knock rang out on the front door moments after he’d gotten his shoes off.

“Coming!” he called, shoving his bag onto the kitchen table before heading back to the door and opening it. “Kakashi,” was the next thing out of his mouth, because, yes, it was Hatake Kakashi standing outside of his house, all gussied up for a mission.

“Sorry about dropping by unannounced,” Kakashi said, looking weirdly twitchy, almost avoiding Iruka’s eyes. Iruka found himself beginning to flush, though he didn’t quite know why.

“Do you need something?” Iruka asked, curious despite his reddening face. Kakashi normally came over when he got letters from Naruto, or when he felt Iruka needed actual food. They were friends, if nothing else.

“I am sorry for my awful timing,” Kakashi said, suddenly very rushed, “but I was going to do this today regardless.” That added a layer of confusion to the embarrassment, and Iruka cocked his head to the side because he really didn’t understand. The next came out just as rushed, “Iruka, this may be sudden but there are extenuating circumstances: I’ve been in love with you for nearly a month and Gai threatened to castrate me if I wasn’t honest with you. I don’t need a reply or anything, I’m sorry about this.”

And he disappeared.

Iruka stood with the door open and snow drifting inside the entryway for a few minutes before he finally blinked and breathed in, whispered, “What the hell?”

-

Day one was horrible, mostly because it was a Saturday and Iruka didn’t have any mission desk shifts until the next day. He was alone with his barely-functioning television and his own thoughts, which was not a good mixture.

Common sense dictated that he actually sit down and consider what Kakashi had told him and his own feelings for Kakashi, but common sense and his own feelings was not something that Umino Iruka wanted to deal with. So. He watched the bad dramas that seemed to be the only things playing on the television while cleaning and ostensibly ignored what had happened the previous day. The mission Kakashi was on was probably an S-Rank; he had time to flounder.

-

Day six was at least the start of facing his feelings, because being a Chuunin working at the mission desk inevitably devolved into being roasted by returning Jounin. Well, the Jounin would try at least, but Iruka had a good enough reputation (and had left cookies enough times in the ready room) that most of the Jounin respected him.

Mitarashi Anko was not one of those Jounin. While, yes, they were friends and had known each other for years, she got a kick out of embarrassing and humiliating anyone and everyone. Nobody was safe from Anko, so when Iruka saw her entering the room in utter filth, whistling, with a bag slung over her shoulder, he silently sighed and hoped she would be quick. In fact, she was practically guaranteed to be; he knew for a fact she hated mud.

“Ir-uuuuu-ka!” she trilled, making a beeline straight for him. He held in another sigh as she rummaged through her bag and slammed her crumpled but perfectly-written report onto the table in front of him. “Mission success!”

“Thank you for your work,” he said dutifully, smoothing out the papers before scanning and stamping them. Iruka pushed them into the received box and wrote out her payment ticket, looking up to hand it to her only to find her staring intently at him. “Do you...need something?” he asked warily.

She frowned slightly, “You look like you need more sleep. You should take a vacation, Iruka.”

Iruka blinked at her, slowly nodded, feeling very confused. Frankly, he thought he looked tired all the time, but something in the back of his mind told him, in a nasty little voice, that it was probably him ostensibly ignoring the events of two days before that made him look worse.

Anko nodded briskly, and headed back the way she had come, pausing to smear some mud on Ebisu, who was passed out on one of the couches.

The thought of Kakashi loomed after that, and by the time Iruka headed home he was happy to be going, if only because it was getting hard not to blush whenever he thought of the other man. _Love_! Hatake Kakashi _loved_ him!

-

Day ten probably should’ve been unremarkable, but Anko managed to worm (or, hah, snake) her way into his plans and ended up dragging him out for barbeque as soon as he was getting off of work. Iruka badly wanted to stay home, but saying no to Anko was like saying no to a pit full of vipers ready to bite: it didn’t happen.

He went with a soldier-like duty, intent to eat food, have Anko pay for the food he ate, and escape from her as soon as possible.

That sequence of events was going swimmingly until he hit the issue of the third. Anko was not drinking because she was going to get a mission the next day, which meant that she was sharp and more brutal than ever.

“ _Why_ do you look so tired?” Anko asked after pushing more vegetables at him.

“Work?”

“Umino Iruka, work has never made you this exhausted looking and I remember you being up for two straight days after the Chuunin Exams,” she pointed the tongs she had been using to flip the meat at his nose, “there must be something wrong.”

One lone bead of sweat made its way down the back of his neck. “Uh.”

She pounced on that, leaning so her breath was hitting him in the nose, “What. Is. It?”

“It’s,” he paused, “personal.”

Her eyes narrowed; she sat back with a huff. “What, did Tsunade fire you? Did someone confess to you?”

He twitched. Anko’s eyes went wide.

-

Day seventeen was when the shit really hit the fan, because Iruka was past the point of worrying what he was going to say to Kakashi and more worried about where the hell Kakashi _was_.

Well, he might’ve broken into the classified storage (not that anyone could prove it) and hunted down the official copy of the scroll Kakashi had received. Most of the scroll locks hadn’t changed since Hiruzen had been alive, so it was just a matter of cracking the thing and finding that the mission should’ve been complete and Kakashi back in a week and a half.

So, a little worried.

Okay, a lot worried, Iruka wasn’t doing well at coping considering Kakashi had confessed to him, departed on an S-rank mission, and then not returned in the expected time frame. He had come to understand that maybe, just maybe, his feelings for Kakashi went deeper than he knew, and in that manner Iruka blasted through all the stages of grief to acceptance in a matter of minutes.

-

Day twenty-three was cold. The snow had stopped for a few days but had returned to dump another two feet on the village. It helped a little that Iruka had fewer mission room shifts and so didn’t have to go outside much, but he was going stir-crazy with how little he had to do. For once, the entire house was spotless, he had caught up on his reading, and he didn’t have anything more he needed to get done before the Academy resumed.

Since he had hit acceptance he had calmed about the topic of Kakashi (other than the worry) and, looking back, the confession made sense. They’d gotten increasingly close after the Chuunin Exams and Naruto’s departure to train with Jiraiya, even to the point that Iruka expected to see Kakashi breaking into his house a couple days a week because he was convinced Iruka couldn’t feed himself. He was probably accurate in that assessment, but breaking into people’s houses was obviously not something he did for just _anybody_. Even Gai had looked a little perplexed when he had mentioned it once while on shift at the mission room.

So, Iruka had proof that Kakashi wasn’t lying, and Iruka was beginning to realize that maybe he felt the same.

-

Day thirty was stressful. Every year when Iruka got back from the winter recess he swore he was ready to return to teaching, and every year he got home from the first day with a headache and a developing cold.

This year was no different. His class was generally quiet (a prayer of thanks that Konohamaru and Naruto had both graduated) but they collectively had been coming down off of their vacation high and had made Iruka miserable. Going home was actually a life-saver.

He had just made it home when there came a knocking on the front door. It felt like déjà vu to call out “Coming!” and have the next thing out of his mouth be, “Kakashi.” Iruka froze until he actually processed that Kakashi was standing outside of his door, looking wet and dirty and bleeding from at least two stab wounds, and before his brain could catch up with his mouth he found himself saying, “You’re really dumb, you know that?”

Kakashi’s grip on the door frame relaxed, and some of the tension leached out of his frame. “I know,” he said, and he sounded relieved.

“Are you alright?” Iruka asked cautiously, because Kakashi seemed to be making a pretty valiant effort to remain standing and not sway. Over his initial shock, Iruka found himself concerned more about Kakashi’s health than anything else.

“Maa, just some mild chakra exhaustion,” Kakashi said, which obviously was a lie because he swayed again, and lost his grip on the door.

He seemed surprised by that, and even more surprised to be caught before he could meet the floor. Iruka had an arm under him. “Mild?” Iruka returned as he hefted Kakashi over to the couch.

“I just wanted to get back, I didn’t worry about that other stuff,” Kakashi said, weakly waving a hand.  
“Like your personal safety,” Iruka muttered, sliding Kakashi down onto the couch. He stayed standing for a moment, hands on hips, looking down at Kakashi, before demanding, “Did you even stop by the hospital?”

Kakashi shrugged, “Haven’t even been to the Tower.”

A part of him felt exasperated that Kakashi hadn’t at least gone to the hospital before coming to bleed out on his couch, but a surge of fondness swept away the exasperation. Iruka was more important than his health; that put things in perspective.

“You know, I had a lot of time to think,” he said conversationally once he had the first aid kit and Kakashi had stripped down to his undershirt and mask so Iruka could work. Kakashi flinched at that, but made no further movement. “Considering you were supposed to be back over two weeks ago.”

After a moment of silence Kakashi asked, nervous, “And?”

“And I think you owe me dinner, to start,” Iruka said, finishing the stitches and wiping his hands. Kakashi turned to fully look at him. “But otherwise a kiss and a ‘sorry’ would work.”

The smile that earned was beatific, which Iruka knew for certain once Kakashi had tugged his mask down. “Sorry,” he said, and Iruka smiled, too, as Kakashi slid a hand behind his neck to tug him forward into a soft kiss.


	2. Chapter 2

Kakashi woke up on Friday morning to snow and something like a feeling of dread for what he had to do. He had promised Gai, the night before after two rounds of beer and another round of frankly nasty heated sake before they all but ate their weight in yakisoba, that he would clear the air between himself and Iruka the next day.

Clear the air? That wasn’t entirely accurate, no. In truth, he was going to confess his undying love to the other man.

Kakashi had to take a minute before getting out of bed to press his unmasked face to the icy cold of the window and hope that no one could see him. He had enough problems without more rumors of what he looked like spreading through the village.

Getting dressed and going was a challenge, but once he had food and (more importantly) water in his system, the alcohol headache receded and he felt more like a human being. Anyway, Iruka was likely at the Academy at that point, so Kakashi’s best bet would be to catch him when he got back home.

-

Well, that was the _plan_ , but it didn’t exactly work out how Kakashi wanted it to. Largely, in part, due to Tsunade.

After whittling away the majority of his day on menial tasks--feeding his dogs, cleaning up his apartment (sparse as it was), doing laundry--when he was finally psyched up to go and stop by Iruka’s house, literally pulling his sandals on to go, a bird appeared outside of his living room window and began tapping the glass.

Torn between absolute anger and resignation, he gave in to the resignation and swiftly launched himself out of his apartment toward the Hokage Tower. His debriefing was brisk and he was back at his apartment in another ten minutes, changed into clothing more suited to the weather in another ten, and in front of Iruka’s door immediately after that. There was no point putting it off; it was always better to rip the bandaid off instead of peeling slowly.

So he knocked, and began sweating bullets as a voice came from inside, called, “Coming!”

-

His mind was fucking screaming at him the entire way out of the village. He was nearly screaming at himself audibly the entire way out of the village because _holy shit_ , what had he just done? Had he actually just told Umino Iruka, a person he considered a close friend and looked up to and, yes, loved, that he, Hatake Kakashi, did in fact love him?

Kakashi, as soon as he was out of sight of the village, flickered down to the ground and buried his head, mask and forehead protector and all, into one of the bigger drifts of snow. Everything about the day was fucking horrible. After a few minutes he pulled his head out, and wet hair and mask aside, the cold calmed him down, and he continued on his way.

It felt good, though, to be out of the village. It helped to clear his head, helped him focus on the people he was tracking. The intel that Tsunade had received days before had put them roughly four days out from Konohagakure, but given her delay in sending someone out after them, they likely had moved. Three were confirmed missing-nin, traveling with three others who likewise looked as if they could be missing-nin but weren’t recognizable from any of the bingo books.

The main goal of his mission was to figure out who the people were, where they were from and where they were going, and assess if they were a threat to Konohagakure. Easy enough normally, but with the amount of snow throughout the countryside there was a potential that the shinobi he was tracking could just up and disappear.

Kakashi focused in on the mission, tamped down his chakra, and continued into the trees.

-

The camp had been abandoned for at least two days by the time he reached it. Going at top speed, it had taken him three days to make it there, and thankfully the snow had died off and the camp itself had been made in a relatively sheltered area. It was easy to confirm that there were six people; it had remained cold enough that the snow hadn’t had a chance yet to melt, and they had made little effort to conceal their presence there.

He didn’t stay long. Their trail was stale enough; he couldn’t waste time.

-

Kakashi was very, very thankful he’d traded out his pants for fur-lined ones and his sandals for boots after a full week sleeping in trees in sub-zero temperatures. It was _so. Fucking. Cold_. He’d gotten used not really feeling his hands despite thick gloves and silk glove liners but it had been over a decade since winter in the Land of Fire had been so cold and snowy for so long. Winters were usually mild, more made up of sleet and rain than snow and ice, and everything was made worse because he was travelling north where snow in winter was normal.

Taking that into consideration, he had layered carefully before leaving, remembering the winter of the year he had turned ten, the year that Minato-sensei had almost lost three fingers to frostbite and both Gai and he had been hospitalized for hypothermia after a mission. Every so often he sent up prayers to whatever gods may be listening in thankfulness that he had done so, because all those layers were the only thing keeping him alive and moving. The moving helped, too, but nothing helped how boring the tracking was.

And, of course, the first topic that Kakashi’s mind went to when he was travelling was Iruka, back in Konohagakure, and the fact that he had _confessed_ before leaving.

It was sort of a relief, actually, to be stuck in the middle of nowhere so nobody could comment on how his visible face would just randomly go tomato-red. He didn’t stick his head in any other snow drifts (that had…not been a very good idea, in fact, and he’d paid for it with a half-frozen nose despite the lining of his mask), but there was really no way for him to stop thinking about Iruka once he began.

So he spent a lot of time thinking as he moved in a wide curve north, following the bits and pieces of a trail that the hunted shinobi had not bothered to hide. He thought about Iruka when he wasn’t considering battle tactics and instead of thinking about the cold. They had spent a lot of time together, after Naruto had left. Partly it was because Naruto had left. He sent letters to Kakashi that were also addressed to Iruka, so Kakashi had taken to stopping by Iruka’s house whenever he got one.

Then he’d learned how hopeless the other man was in regards to making food, and Kakashi wasn’t normally a sucker but Iruka intrigued him enough for Kakashi to break into his house a few days a week to make him dinner that wasn’t takeout or instant ramen. Everything had snowballed from there until they had progressed to spending five nights a week (on average) together.

Kakashi couldn’t really even pinpoint when he had realized he was in love with Iruka; it felt as if he had always loved him.

-

Two weeks in Kakashi was utterly sick of the rations and the cold, but seeing as there was nothing he could do about either, he sucked it up and continued tracking. Which was made difficult when more snow blew in, but he persevered despite how his feet and hands were pretty much always numb.

At two weeks, though, he had something like a break in the mission. The trail that he had been following--still almost glaringly obvious, they made no effort to conceal it--ended in a tamped-down clearing, and then split.

Kakashi took a break to warm up his hands and feet, and once he had control over his fingers again he drew out a kunai to nick one thumb, and summoned two of his dogs.

Akino was one of his hardier ninken, with a thick double coat that meant he could stay in the cold and snow. Not that he wouldn’t complain, Kakashi silently grumbled as the dog yapped at him about how cold it was. Unsurprisingly, it seemed they had same type of weather at the valley they lived in, as evidenced by both Akino’s chattering about current events and all of the cloth that Pakkun was wrapped in. At least Pakkun was quiet from his perch on Akino’s back, and after the dog had quieted Kakashi leaned forward (god, when had Akino gotten _big_?) so he was eye-level.

“There’s a trail through the woods going north-northwest in the trees,” he said, nodding a head in the mentioned direction, “I have to follow a trail going north-northeast; the group I was following split in two.”

“How important is this?” Pakkun asked, and he sounded a little petulant. Kakashi could understand why. Pakkun wasn’t built to be in the cold for long periods of time.

“We don’t really know. Could be _very_ important, though,” Kakashi said, giving the miniature pug a scratch on the head before cupping Akino’s head with both gloved hands, “I need to you to let Pakkun guide you to them; if they split up further return to Konohagakure and inform them of that.”

“So just...follow them?” Akino asked, cocking his thickly furred head.

“Yes, until I contact you.”

The dogs nodded, and took off.

-

Two and a half weeks in Kakashi was not only cold but also exhausted. He had intercepted the group he was following, which thankfully was made up of four people, and had been observing them for one day. During that one day they hadn’t done anything, and in fact hadn’t traveled at all. They had a rather nice camp put together, though, mostly set up under a massive snag that was newly dead but still heavy with branches.

Underneath it was mostly dry, and that was where they had set up, on the eastern side of it. A pretty good camp, all things considered, but Kakashi was stuck in a tree fifty meters away, in the snow and ice and wind.

While the camp was nice, relations between the shinobi in it did not seem to be going very well. Within two hours upon setting up shop in the tree, Kakashi had been treated to three arguments and one of the identifiable missing-nin loudly threatening to leave to inform on them. That was probably enough justification Kakashi needed to get rid of all of them, but really he needed _specifics_ to justify killing four people.

Luckily, he got specifics.

The morning after he had found the group of four, an Otogakure shinobi, judging by their headband and attire, appeared.

Kakashi silently grumbled to himself when the person did show up. If Orochimaru was involved that made everything more complicated, but even if the shinobi was from Otogakure it didn’t mean that they were affiliated with Orochimaru. Jiraiya had sent information that confirmed that Orochimaru was no longer staying in Otogakure. Either way, he couldn’t necessarily kill them.

That earned some more grumbling before he flickered far enough away that the shinobi wouldn’t sense him making a clone, then sending that clone underground to listen in. He returned to his usual tree and waited. It wasn’t long before the Otogakure shinobi left and clone dispelled itself, and Kakashi learned a whole lot.

The Oto shinobi was not actually from Otogakure, but a rogue pretending to be from the village who was colluding with the six shinobi Kakashi was tracking. Their aim was to strike Konohagakure--the fake Oto shinobi had used that disguise to get information from others who had participated in the invasion during the Chuunin Exams, placement of the certain buildings, other sensitive information. And, luckily for Kakashi, that information was sealed in a scroll that the head of the four-person group had in possession. That made things much, _much_ easier.

-

He waited until night to strike. The group had been lax the night before, but perhaps with the visit from their colleague they had realized that they were still in enemy territory. But, even then, they only had one person on guard, a young man wearing a slashed Kusagakure forehead protector, and he wasn’t paying the best attention.

Kakashi slit his throat and in quick succession and pure silence had two of the others killed as well. The last he left alive, the leader of the four-person group. Tsunade would no doubt appreciate at least one of them being left alive to provide more information if they needed it; he trapped the man in a strong genjutsu before pausing to figure out what to do with him and dealing with the remains.

After a few moments of consideration and mental list-making, Kakashi summoned Pakkun.

The dog looked as ornery as usual, and he made no protest when Kakashi picked him up and tucked him into the front of his vest before picking the incapacitated man up. “To Akino,” Kakashi said, and he felt rather than saw Pakkun’s nod.

“Start heading north, sonny,” the dog’s muffled, deep voice said in return.

-

It took them more days than he would like to catch up to the second group of people. The snow had returned and it was more of a blizzard than a mere seasonal snowstorm; they waited it out for three days before being able to continue, and Kakashi almost wished he had thought to pack snowshoes or something because going through the drifts of snow, even aided by chakra, was extremely difficult.

He began to run out of ways to pass the time (well, ways other than thinking of Iruka; he could do that for months) and found himself grasping for songs he had once sung, words in dialects that he half-knew to keep his mind sharp and sane. Pakkun slept. A lot. Kakashi couldn’t begrudge him of that.

They finally made it to where Akino was holed up five days after leaving the other camp. The dog was better adapted to the cold than Kakashi, but after five days in the snow he looked pretty pitiful. They wouldn’t have rest yet, though, because Kakashi needed the incapacitated man taken to Konohagakure, and the dogs were going to do that.

Akino made only perfunctory grumblings about the task, probably grateful that he would be able to move. The dogs figured out how to get the man to Konohagakure while Kakashi scoped out the two remaining people. According to Akino (and verified by Pakkun) nobody else had arrived and neither of the two shinobi had left at any point; that made things easier. Once he eliminated them, he could be done.

So, leaving the dogs to their business, he decided sooner was better than later, and despite both missing-nin being awake and alert, a smoke bomb was enough for him to get a few hits in before they realized he was there.

Which was fortunate, because his hands were still super cold and Kakashi was tired enough that the first shinobi, a very spry old woman wearing a slashed Konohagakure headband, landed two kunai into his back before he took her down and evened out the playing field, so to speak. Didn’t really recognize her; he could check his bingo book when he was all done.

The last was a problem, a younger woman from Iwagakure by her forehead protector. She had finished the hand seals for a jutsu by the time Kakashi had dealt with the other woman, and slammed her hands into the ground.

The earth exploded, thin snake or dragon shapes forming from the disrupted earth and diving for Kakashi.

She didn’t stop there; she began speeding through another series of hand seals, and Kakashi sighed, pushed his forehead protector up to confirm that it was also doton, and let lightning chakra gather in his right hand.

-

After incinerating both of the bodies, Kakashi found himself near collapse. His first instinct was to blame his use of the Sharingan but really he knew it to be a combination of weeks of exhaustion, chakra overuse, and probably also the Sharingan.

That said, he needed to move, because he was on the border near the ruins of the Kannabi bridge and he knew for fact that it was still regularly patrolled by Kusagakure.

So once he was a couple hours away he really did collapse. Kakashi found himself feeling both like an idiot for it and like he was probably right to have told Iruka that he loved him, because if he was going to die in the cold from two different stab wounds, he would’ve wanted the other man to know. But then that was not something that he wanted, because Iruka was frankly overly sentimental and would probably never get over his death, especially since Kakashi had just booked it after confessing. God, he couldn’t die, what the hell was he thinking?

-

He forced himself to keep moving, his legs to keep working. It’d been just over four weeks since he had initially left Konohagakure, and Kakashi was contemplating giving up and freezing to death when the walls of Konohagakure rose in front of him. The end was in sight, and Kakashi didn’t know what he looked forward to more: getting actual sleep, having nutrition that did not come from rations (he still had three packs sealed in a scroll which was, frankly, a miracle), or seeing Iruka again.

Who was he kidding, it was the last, it was definitely the last. Before Kakashi had really processed it, he was inside the walls of Konohagakure and his feet were automatically taking him in the direction of Iruka’s house. Since he had sent the dogs to the Tower with the shinobi he had incapacitated and the scrolls he had taken from both groups, he didn’t feel it was too pressing. Tsunade and Ibiki knew as much as he did, if not more, and could take any steps necessary from there.

So he stopped in front of Iruka’s front door, feeling exhausted and cold and mostly just nervous, and knocked. It was like heaven to actually hear Iruka inside the house, yelling, “Coming!”

-

Iruka’s house was very, very warm, and Kakashi really didn’t want to leave once he was on the couch and Iruka had gotten him a sweater. Iruka likewise didn’t seem like he wanted Kakashi to leave, given how he pushed Kakashi to lay down on the couch and then paused for a minute to stare at him with a strange expression on his face.

“I should go,” Kakashi said, because it was vaguely true, he probably needed to check in with Tsunade to make sure that Akino and Pakkun got the guy and the scrolls to her.

“Tsunade is going to send you to the hospital if you go report in,” Iruka said, his movements slow as he went down the hall and returned, carrying no less than three blankets. “I’m fairly sure she did get your, uh, delivery? Ibiki has been in and out a lot since a few days ago.”

Kakashi made what he hoped was an assenting grunt. Iruka piled the blankets one by one on him, made the expression again, and went into the kitchen. From the sounds, Kakashi guessed that he was making tea.

He found it very easy to relax, which was not something that normally happened after he returned from a mission. That earned several increasing levels of blushes, and he had to stop himself from tugging his mask back up. If Iruka wondered about his tomato imitation, he could just say he had too many blankets on top of him.

Iruka snapped him out of thoughts of how he was actually going to survive now that his feelings were reciprocated by appearing with tea. Kakashi really didn’t want to move but tea sounded _really_ good, so he sat up and accepted the cup that Iruka offered him.

“You should probably get some sleep first,” Iruka said. He turned to look at Kakashi, the strange expression back on his face, and it suddenly struck Kakashi that the expression was _fondness_ as Iruka continued, “I don’t particularly want to risk taking you out for food if you’re going to fall asleep on me. I’ll be here, though, if you need anything.”

Kakashi cocked his head at that, staring at Iruka. The longer he stared, the more reddened Iruka’s face became, and it was a delightful sight. “Another kiss?” Kakashi asked, suddenly feeling rather bold.

The corner of Iruka’s mouth ticked up in the barest hint of a smile, and he obliged.


End file.
